Ex-president Clinton calls for US pressure on Sudan

By Paul Simao

ATLANTA, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Former President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday the United States should increase diplomatic pressure on Sudan to allow more foreign peacekeeping troops in Africa’s largest country, which has been hit by three days of ethnically driven street clashes.

“What we should do is try to go to the U.N. and put some more heat on the Sudanese government,” Clinton said during an appearance at a convention of African-American journalists in Atlanta.

“We need more troops there,” Clinton said.

Sudan’s Islamic government agreed earlier this year to accept about 10,000 peacekeeping troops as part of a peace agreement signed with rebels from its largely African Christian and animist south.

Most of those troops will come from China, Egypt, Kenya, India, Bangladesh and a handful of other non-Western nations.

Clinton, who recently visited Africa, said additional peacekeeping troops should not come from the United States or other Western nations but from nations “less controversial” to the government in Khartoum.

His advice came as Sudan’s government called for an end to the riots that have killed more than 100 people this week.

Angry southerners took to the streets on Monday after the government said ex-rebel leader John Garang had been killed in a helicopter crash. Garang fought the northern government for two decades before making peace earlier this year and becoming vice president.

The violence raised fears new north-south tensions could undermine the peace deal between Garang’s former rebel movement and the northern government, which also faces continued civil strife in its western Darfur region.

The U.S. government has urged Khartoum to stop the violence.